Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

I don't know, stuff like the Muses LPs and Husker Du - they sound the way they do because of how they were recorded. No remastering is going to change that.

Oh and "House Tornado" is glorious in its opaqueness.

My dream reissue project would have been Hüsker Dü at DCC Compact Classics. Restoring the bass and bringing in some warmth via vacuum tubes would probably have done wonders, especially given how it was recorded. Hoffman's masterings never used additional compression, but they typically went for a BIG sound.

EDIT: Hah, was just about to post this before Gerald's above. I know what he means, but tubes in a mastering chain can do wonders for hard-sounding solid state recordings.

xxp I've never heard anything up to House Tornado on CD aside from the "In A Doghouse" reissue! which ones would you say sound bad, and is the aforementioned reissue included in that assessment?

GMBB House Tornado is the album I was specifically thinking of - I love the opacity and density, but the overall sound of the CD is like when I used to set a graphic EQ aged 13, with the treble and the bass pushed up and the midrange scooped out. I love that album so much I am almost willing to take a punt on an LP in the hope it would be less tiring of a listen.
I quite like the CD of the debut, but Hunkpapa has horrible 80s production flourishes so I'm not sure it would ever sound natural. Real Ramona is better and pretty much everything after is fine to good, The Curse excepted. The 2003 self-title is an example of how to nail the complexity with a good master, despite being scraped together on weekend sessions via Pro Tools iirc. And having had a poorly pressed EP of Chains Changed I was so happy they did it justice on the Doghouse comp.

I'd be happy to do a "needle drop" (as the young ppl say) of my House Tornado LP, at 16/48k-PCM (I think that's what my Pro-Ject Phono Box USB V does), but I bought it 33 years ago and I played it to death for at least the first decade ;) And the first few years were on a late-'70s Crown music-centre :/

I have to admit, the last time I listened to songs off that record were through streaming services, but it did visit the turntable through the audiophool years, so I guess it must sound ok?

(For want of a longer USB cable, I can never be bothered digitising vinyl).

To my great embarrassment I have a Sire promo LP I bought years ago when I didn't have a working turntable, and since I've had a working turntable the LP has been at my ex-wife's house, so I need to get my shit together and reclaim my vinyl ... thank you though!

Needledrops are funny. I was thinking of upgrading my table until I downloaded some well regarded needle drops that I couldn't distinguish from my table when A/B'ing. My digital chain is no slouch neither.

Matt - we're on the same page as far as assessment of the Muses catalog. I even sold "The Curse", it's just an irredeemable bootleg. I guess I just adjust to the sound of things I love, though it's true I can sort of "hear what's missing" if I really think about it, but it doesn't bother me much. The Chameleons debut, "Script Of The Bridge" was remastered once, and then Mark Burgess did it himself, and I really can't tell the difference. That just points to the weakest link in the digital chain - our ears!

Ha, this reminds me of my very earliest internet encounters - mentioning how terrible I thought The Curse sounded on rec.music.4ad in summer '93 and getting "flamed" for it. Also singing the praises of His Name Is Alive's "heavy metal" set at 13 Year Itch and being told it didn't happen. And here we are.

Yeah I've read an interview with Kristin where she expressed bafflement that 4AD wanted to released a bad recording of a pretty average show. At least the cover is beautiful!

oh and to anyone 4AD sympathetic interested in sound quality, avoid the Cocteau Twins remasters, they sound comically bad under the sure guidance of "tin ears" Guthrie.

His Name Is Alive's "heavy metal" set at 13 Year Itch and being told it didn't happen. And here we are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KO3pWCgBrY
!!

Hurrah! Metal might be overstating it but, skipping through that, there’s a bit 13-14min in where I thought “well, this isn’t like the records”. I think it was also Unrest and Muses that night. A lifetime ago.

I remember being in Australia while people on the 4ad-l mailing list were going to those shows, it was very weird.

I should sell the Curse CD I have but it's so pretty I'm not going to. Also then there would be a Throwing Muses release I didn't have, that's no good either.

Yup "The Curse" was disappointing to me, mostly because the vocals are way too low in the mix and the guitar is way too loud in the mix; BUT I wouldn't call it irredeemable - the "Hunkpapa" tracks are more raw than the de-clawed studio versions, for example. Oddly, the usually superb Guy Fixsen mixed the album!

I remember those rec.music.4ad days (and the 4AD-L list) and the reports from "The 13 Year Itch"! I have vague memories of someone saying that in addition to the HNIA sets, Karin Oliver did a short a cappella set too (or am I remembering that incorrectly)? And indeed the "heavy metal" HNIA was controversial (like the "Mouth By Mouth" version of "The Dirt Eaters") for fans! I love it all.

I also remember around that time on rec.music.4ad or 4AD-L, when someone posted about having HNIA stay at their place and then photographing them when they slept! And then years later, there's some interview with Warren Defever where he mentions that...

Thanks for the YouTube link, assert! Hadn't heard that before. That same account also posted HNIA's second set at *The 13 Year Itch*.

nice that we were on 4ad-l at the same time, iirc it was about 500 people? One time I dropped my lengthy Muses discography beefed up with quotes etc on the list, and felt like I was their official biographer or something.

Was it maybe even 4ad-l I was on? I can't be sure now; a long summer as a postgrad with a Liverpool University email address and access to WWW. Four years later, when I had web access at home, it was the Usenet groups I subscribed to.

Ok wow digging into my memory banks now - yeah maybe it was the 4AD-L mailing list rather than a Usenet newsgroup, because regarding Usenet I think I only religiously checked alt.music.alternative (?) and rec.music.gaffa (Kate Bush board) back then. Good times.

For what it's worth a bit of googling suggests that the group was alt.music.4ad rather than rec.etc:
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.music.4ad

Searching for "the curse sounds terrible" is unhelpful. Google Groups is pretty poor. It'd be great if you could sort the messages by reverse chronological order, for example. But you can't. I remember posting on Usenet but I can't find my own messages, although I remember that I could in the past.

You'd think that the total contents of Usenet wouldn't be too hard to archive. It was text, which compresses well. If you ignore the binaries groups the entire contents of Usenet from the 1980s to the early 2000s can't have been that large.

The 4AD-L mailing list was different from the rec.music.4ad Usenet group. The listservs generally had a moderator somewhere who could rein in the spammers/bad actors, not so for Usenet. Looking back over the last 25% of the Google Groups archive of r.m.4ad, you can see the spam/off-topic posts/noise increasing until everyone just gives up.

tbh the same thing happened to 4ad-l, at least for me in 1997

You'd think that the total contents of Usenet wouldn't be too hard to archive. It was text, which compresses well. If you ignore the binaries groups the entire contents of Usenet from the 1980s to the early 2000s can't have been that large.

:(

This whole MoFi DSD-to-vinyl thing isn't blowing over.

is it schadenfreude if i laugh at that? am i a bad person?

rhetorical questions, of course. i'm howling either way.

Expected something like that the minute the story broke.

It would be hilarious if the litigation resulted in MoFi hiring an expert to opine that you can't actually tell the difference between digital and analog.

That's basically what people are suing about: "holden ears" suing because MoFi made them disprove, via a years-long blind test, the very golden-eared nonsense they so afamantly espoused about analog's intrinsic superiority and digital's innate shittiness.

They're suing because they're embarassed, rather than admit they were full of shit; lashing out, rather than rethinking their expensive obsessions with gear. I hope they lose, for further embarrassment.

All more proof, to me, that audiophiles don't care about music.

Golden ears, that is.

Pretty hard to show “damages” you’d think. Paid too much for a record! Oh my.

"holden ears"

They think MoFi is just a bunch of phony crumbums.

https://i.discogs.com/_TTjndJ1BpdA3MFU7EVZJdf_BFTihaHPpN4xoyuTU1c/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:500/w:500/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTM0OTk4/MDEtMTQzOTAwNTkx/NS02NDMxLmpwZWc.jpeg

Holden's mumbles fill your ears
'Philes express their vinyl fears
Weep, pretty darlings, for MoFi
Their signal chain's been compromised

lol

good idea for audiophiles to sue one of the best vinyl reissue companies out of existence, that'll make their hobby more fun

unironic agree.

An opportunity for whomever brings the first 4x DSD player to the domestic market!

"So good, even these assholes couldn't tell it was used to cut their vinyl."

well, technically most of them couldn't before either, but uhh . . .

Is this also the thread for musician snake oil?

https://www.tonerite.com/

Vintage Tone, Now!
It’s no secret that vintage instruments sound better. Tens of thousands of hours of play time alter the molecular structure of the wood fibers, aging the instrument and creating a richer, sweeter, and louder tone.
The ToneRite accelerates this same play-in process by using a set of sub-sonic frequencies to simulate long term play.
Simply attach the ToneRite whenever you are not playing, and expect to hear a dramatic increase in resonance, balance, and range after only a week of use.

“The difference is amazing. It holds notes MUCH better and, I may be crazy, but it feels better. It's more of an inspiring guitar now. “

Ed King
Guitarist
Lynyrd Skynyrd

100% belongs in this thread.

Some crossover with ums thread of craigslist ads for tone lawyer gear.

lol I'm a big believer in instrument mojo and will absolutely spend money on "the '73 Guilds are just nicer" vintage & what of it, but all this has been fully debunked

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n02tImce3AE

TBF, this seems to be intended for acoustic instruments, where the wood obviously does make a significant difference to the tone

What I've never understood about that pitch is that it you want to capture the molecular decay that made the tone on a Zepplin album, you wouldn't a 1950s Les Paul, but one around 15 years old, the age those guitars were in the 70s.

ha, true

bendy that's not how any of this works. these people would buy jimmy page himself and treat him like a jukebox if it were allowed. all for the sake of bragging to their friend (who may or not have the surname lefsetz).

but for real, i thought it was rad that even the "professional musician" testimonial shows up with some self-doubt in it. they must really have faith in their product.

“I may be crazy. “

Ed King
Guitarist
Lynyrd Skynyrd

same, ed. same.